1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to software testing and, more particularly, to automated analysis and testing of websites.
2. Description of the Related Art
Websites are complex collections of information intended to be viewed and used and interacted with by sending information from a server (website server) over the Internet to users who work with this information from an internet browser client program (internet browser) that typically runs on a personal computer or other computing device. A common Internet browser is Internet Explorer (IE) by Microsoft Corporation. The IE browser runs on the Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 2000 operating systems.
Testing and analysis of websites is needed to: (i) confirm content and proper operation and proper content (i.e., functional testing and validation); (ii) determine delivered performance of a website server (i.e., website timing and tuning); (iii) analyze capacity of the website server by imposing realistic loads (i.e., website server loading); and (iv) identify erroneous website pages (i.e., site analysis).
Conventionally, there are several alternative methods that can be used to obtain information about how a website behaves when viewed from the Windows environment. One conventional method intercepts a Windows event loop. Another conventional method intercepts a HTTP protocol sequence by building a wrapper or proxy around an instance of the Internet browser. Both of these conventional methods have disadvantages. One disadvantage of intercepting the Windows event loop is that every keyboard activity and/or mouse activity at the primitive level of its interaction with the operating system must be handled. This leads to cumbersome programming. One disadvantage of intercepting of the HTTP protocol sequence via a wrapper or proxy is that the focus is on the communication between the Internet browser and the server.
Thus there is a need for improved approaches to testing websites.